toes and heels

I’ve been wearing my FiveFingers around town (mostly to work and back) this week and last week, on and off. Flat concrete remains a tough surface for me to walk on. Every time I start again, I feel like I’ve gone back to square one, with the hurting heels. But there have definitely been moments […]

five toes

When I was in the Bay Area this weekend I happened to walk in to a shoe store that carries Vibram FiveFingers. I’ve been looking for a store that carries these for a while, since seeing them on friends’ feet intrigued me, and took the opportunity to try them on. I decided to buy a […]

Margaret Mead on manipulation

Later, when I seriously turned by attention to the whole question of manipulation, I began to understand that one should not use either a person’s strength or his weakness against him. As I see it now, the only course that is ethically justified is an appeal to strength — not in order to throw one’s […]

Ten is cool, seven is cool

Xtracycle on Twitter today pointed me to a great blog post from Doug about his seven years as a car-free commuter (in Minnesota, no less). I mentioned to someone recently that it’s been nearly ten years since I owned a car. (Actually, I’m not sure I ever technically owned a car, since the car I […]

When you love your cauliflower

The Great Heat Wave of ’09, or whatever it will end up being called, was pretty miserable in my apartment, and left me feeling rather out of sorts and tired due to lack of good sleep. I was going to work later and staying later to avoid the worst of the heat, hiding in restaurants, […]

Happiness, it overfloweth

I’ve had a lot of moments lately where I’m just absurdly happy to be in Portland…the grinning-in-the-street, singing-randomly sort of happy. And I think about blogging about whatever just happened and then something else awesome happens and I forget. Awesome things: I climbed Mt. Tabor on my bike (yesterday). There was nothing particularly impressive about […]

Seattle, part 2

My Sunday in Seattle was slightly less ad-hoc than Saturday. I spent the day with my best friend from graduate school and her husband and brother- and sister-in-law. Our first stop was Cafe Flora, which is I think better than the Yelp reviews suggest (for those of you who automatically go Yelp any restaurant someone […]